Developing First-Level Leaders

How can you ensure that your company’s frontline managers feel committed and involved? Chaos Game consultant Andreas Priestland and co-author Robert Hanig explain how one of the world’s largest corporations, British Petroleum, answered that question in Harvard Business Review. They describe the collaborative effort they led to create the programmes's four components: Supervisory Essentials, Context and Connections, the Leadership Event, and Peer Partnerships.

The design team surveyed those it deemed to be first-level leaders and others throughout BP; they extensively benchmarked other companies' training efforts for lower level managers; and they conducted a series of pilot programmes which involved dozens of advisers. More than 8,000 of BP's first-level leaders attended, and those who experienced the training were consistently ranked higher in performance than those who did not, both by their bosses and by the employees who reported to them.